Things I think I’ve learned today:
- Virtuoso – a SPARQL database that’s used by DBPedia – is surprisingly nice, but it’s also got some oddities in synchronization behavior. I have a bulk process that runs for days, and I added a “resting” phase to allow Virtuoso to handle checkpoints gracefully, etc., and finding the sweet spot for the resting/synchronization behavior is “fun.” It’s probably not a big deal, but it’s … there.
- People have issues they won’t or can’t compromise on. They can be unreasoning in this. This is not something I learned, but something about which I was reminded. I’m pretty sure I have issues like that, but I’m not sure what those issues are offhand. I have some ideas, but when those concerns are challenged, I can react to them without seeing them as a threat, so maybe my ideas about my “closed-handed issues” aren’t right yet.
- “Open-handed issues” are those issues about which we can disagree and still find acceptable consensus; you can say the Knicks are an awful team, and I can say they have potential…. without the two of us coming to blows over the assertions. “Closed-handed issues” are those issues about which we cannot compromise or accept the other’s assertion. My goal is to have assertions that I can and will defend, but without rejection of someone who holds a countering assertion (i.e., we can agree to disagree without compromising our beliefs), where “closed-handed issues” tend to be more of the “I can’t talk to you about this” because the nature of the issue leads to separation and demonization. For a lot of people, President Trump is a “closed-handed issue,” to the point where they’ll take “principled stands” against whatever he says, even when he agrees with their prior statements.
- I’ve been trying to do fierce, short-term exercises: I’ll do a ton of situps, lunges, squats, pushups, etc., for a short period of time, then rest… enough to build up a sweat, and enough to feel it. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the optimal approach, but I’m in poor enough shape that it’s actually yielding benefits so far; I need to get to a decent baseline before I can really consider myself in a place where I can try to get back into what I’d consider actually decent physical condition.
- Humanizer looks like an interesting project. I occasionally write methods to do some of the presentation stuff contained here – namely, things indicating cardinality – so a library that centralizes such methods and does them properly would be nice. There’s also room for expansion, especially regarding indefinite articles. I may look into that, but I’m not sure how I’d handle certain regional differences – for example, my mid-Atlantic dialect says “a humble man,” because the “h” is vocalized, while my grandmother’s Deep South dialect used “an humble man” because for many dialects the “h” in “humble” is silent.
- I have never mastered playing the drums with brushes. I like the sound in the hands of someone who knows how to do it, but … that ain’t me.
- Easy way to annoy me: ask me to do something and then get in my way while I try to do it. I’m glad to do things for people, but dang it, get out of my way.
